Gate: Hebe’s empty cup
The multi-headed dragon, Goodness, and Odin’s wolf pack moved through the furthest reaches of the Jungle of the Mind. Their prey continued to elude them, something none of the hunters were accustomed to.
As the jungle became thicker, the skies darkened above them. A few moments later, thunder sounded and fat drops of liquid began to fall from the skies. Goodness called the hunt to a halt in order to examine the strange rain.
“It’s blood,” she said, half of her myriad heads looking up and the others staring at the blood on her claws. “Worse yet, we’ve reached the edge of the known wilderness. To venture further is to risk our collective sanity.”
The golden-eyed leader of the wolf pack seemed undeterred. “We will not rest until we have this mysterious shadow,” he said. “Already she has caused too much havoc to be allowed to continue on.”
“Be that as it may,” Goodness conceded. “I am too closely tied to the High Priestess, one of the elders of the Inner Worlds, to risk falling into shadow. My blessings in your search.” The dragon opened her many mouths and breathed over the wolves. Where her breath touched them, the pack shined with the brightly colored lights of the dragon scales of Goodness. “My protection will turn away the first strike, no matter how strong or swift your opponent may be. But that extends to the first strike only.”
“The pack will take care of the rest,” the alpha said. The wolves silently melted away into the jungle’s darkness and thick vegetation as blood continued to rain from the sky.
“It is a sad day when wolves dare to tread where Goodness will not,” the dragon said. With a sigh, she began to retrace her steps. Goodness did not notice her shadow moving under its own volition, and away from her side, following the pack into the darkness.
Meanwhile, I was navigating the cave where I had last heard the voice of the Devourer. With Dream and Companion now at my side, I found the strength to crawl through the cave filled with hypnotic spiders. The glow from my lizard was far brighter than the weak light emerging from the spider webs but they continued to send their whispers into my mind.
“Aren’t you tired?” they said. “There is nothing wrong with seeking rest. Lay down with us and we will restore you to what you were.” The hypnotic lights began again. “Seek your power in oblivion and sleep. The answers are on the other side of exhaustion. You are tired. You need rest.”
My limbs grew heavy and I collapsed on the floor of the cave once more. Dream pulled my ear lobe while Companion nudged my shoulder with his great muzzle. “Don’t stop yet,” the great lion said encouragingly. “I think there’s moonlight up ahead. You’ll feel stronger if we can get you out of this underground cavern and back beneath the stars.”
“I am tired, Companion, so very tired,” I said. “I feel like it has been too long since I truly rested.” I shut my eyes for a moment and felt myself sliding towards unconsciousness. “Maybe the Bodhisattva of Mercy will hold me once again as they did long ago. I don’t feel up to this endless challenge. The spiders are stealing my spirit from me.”
“Use my strength, Heidi,” Companion said. “Dream and I will get you through this difficult passage together. Don’t lose hope now. We are with you until the end.” With those words, the lion stepped back into my heart.
Dream grew in size until he took up nearly half the tunnel. Spouting cleansing flame, he cleared the spider webs from the tunnel ahead and I felt some strength returning to my heart and spirit. “I do not know what those creatures are telling you,” my dragon said. “But I can’t help but think it is their vile influence that is preventing you from leaving this place.” He blew silver-tinted flames through the cavern once more. “Let’s seek the source of the light as Companion suggested and maybe you will feel better again.”
I sat up, noting the newly re-opened wound on my side didn’t hurt as much. “Dream, why did you take so long to come to me?” I asked, struggling to my feet. “I called you and everyone else until my throat was raw with the effort as I kept drowning in a sea of blood over and over again. I missed you terribly.”
Dream looked troubled. “I’m not sure why I did not hear your voice,” he said. “My memories are blurry and strange. First, I was a stone container for The Night King and spent a great deal of time holding his power in check for your eventual return to the inner worlds. I waited a long time, years perhaps.” Dream’s light dimmed slightly. “But then you were back, holding Love’s cup. We went together to rule in peace in a palace in the clouds.”
“Castle Skye?” I asked. With one hand on the wall and the other clasped to my side, I started towards the light shining in the distance of the spiders’ cavern.
Dream shook his head. “This palace floated on clouds. It was like Skye, but it was not Skye. We took a rainbow bridge to reach it and drifted over a valley where the Moon sleeps between her rendezvous with the Sun.” He shrank to nearly his former size in order to walk next to me through the cave. “We asked Titania to dance and Psyche to sing in order to invite The Light Congress to our new home. They created wonders for us, shining dreams that glittered and spun. Through the song and the dance, we received visions of oceans filled with light within which butterflies made of ice and living flame skated along the surface and suddenly shot up into the sky to become stars. It was like a dream without end.”
Lost in his reminiscences, Dream bumped up against me and one of his scales fell off. I bent laboriously over to retrieve it. “Suddenly, the mist in my mind cleared and I realized you were calling,” he said. “I was not with you, I was sitting upon the throne, entwined with The Night King and no longer containing him whatsoever. So, I fled his malevolent presence, following in your footsteps until I found you sleeping in the sea of blood and now we are here together.”
I gazed at the scale in the palm of my hand, shining like a diamond. Within the diamond’s depths, I saw myself lying upon a bed with my badger by my side. I poked the scale with my fingertip and the vision faded. “Am I still asleep? Where is Badger, Dream?” I asked. “I miss him. Please bring him to me while I finish the path through this dreary cave. Then, we can all adventure together once more as we did so long ago.”
Dream disappeared to do my bidding and I was alone once more. The moment my dragon entered another realm, his scale turned to mist and the spiders’ venomous whispers began again in the darkness, but I continued forward through the area Dream had cleared with his enchanted flames. Faint moonlight gleamed at the end of the tunnel, appearing brighter than it actually was in the all-encompassing gloom.
I emerged from the tunnel and tripped on a jagged stone at the entrance, falling into a small lake. The water was viscous and impossible to swim in. “At least this lake is more like water and not blood,” I said to myself. “I’ve had my fill of blood for the foreseeable future.” Instead of struggling, I gave myself up to the forces pulling me downwards and I sank into unconsciousness for a time.
When I opened my eyes, I was sitting on the edge of the pool with half a dozen young women. We were all covered in the liquid from the pool and it dripped from our hair and bodies, gleaming in the moonlight. It smelled like perfumed oil.
“Come, water spirits,” one of the women said. “We must prepare the feast. All must be ready before the gods arrive.”
“Let the gods prepare their own feast,” I said, weariness from the spiders’ cavern covering me once more. “I wish to do nothing but sleep.” The spirits tugged on my arms until I followed them to a clearing in the trees. One long table ran the length of the clearing, set with dishes, garlands and flowers.
“All is ready, my friends,” I said. “What further preparations are required? May I not return to the pool to rest?” But one of the spirits shook her head at my assessment.
“The cups are not filled,” she said, pointing to a tall urn on the edge of the clearing. “As handmaidens of the goddess, it is up to us to keep the cups filled.”
“Handmaidens of which goddess?” I asked. “I’ve met so many.”
The spirit leaned closer and whispered, “All of them, silly fish. They all drink from our cup and gladly. We are the eternal youth of the divine realms of the feminine spirit, the Ganymeda.”
At the invocation of the name of the cupbearers of the goddess, the glade began to stretch, elongating itself into a narrow and winding path from the feet of the spirits of water and myself to the tall urn which, once close, was now seemingly miles distant. Mirrors as tall as grown men appeared on either side of this path, between the edge of the forest and where the maidens of the pool and I were destined to run.
The mirrors were so filled with mist and shadow that I could perceive nothing within them though I peered closely at the nearest one until the leader of our group took my hand, leading me to the start of the path. “I hope you recovered your strength while you slept within our sacred pool,” the spirit said. “The task we now face is arduous and not all will reach the water to fill the cups of the gods and goddesses both. Promise me you will not look back when the race begins. It’s imperative that your eyes remain on the path ahead.”
I sighed and reached within myself to where Companion sat as a silent witness in my spirit. “I seem to be making one promise after another these days,” I said. “I can still feel the lion’s strength within me so, no matter the obstacle or hindrance, I promise to keep my eyes on the path ahead.”
“It is not for navigating the path ahead that your undivided attention is required,” the spirit said. “It is necessary to maintain your pace towards the urn despite the fate of your companions. Much sacrifice is required from those who would fill the cups of the gods and goddesses, serving the ruling powers of the world.”
At that moment, the pool of scented oil the water spirits and I had emerged from exploded into a pillar of fire and began to leap from its banks, igniting in the footsteps of the Ganymeda and crawling inescapably towards us over the ground of the glade while growling like a living creature made of flame. “That is the signal. The gods require us,” said the leader of our group. “Run, spirits of the water, run as if your existence depends upon it.”
“Run, Heidi, and don’t look back!” Companion whispered from my heart. The breaking of his habitual silence was as startling to me as the all-consuming pillar of fire’s appearance and I took to the path between the mirrors as if a pack of hounds was at my heels. The spirits of the water around me dashed just as madly but our presence was easily followed by the flames which ignited in the sacred oil which still dripped and flowed from our forms, despite leaving the pool long ago.
Tendrils of shadow began to flow out of the mirrors on either side of the path and one caught the heel of the spirit who ran immediately before me. She was dragged off of the path of the Ganymeda into the mirror, a brief shriek of terror escaping her lips before she disappeared from our foot race towards the urn. I caught myself before I turned my head to follow her untimely exit. “Please don’t look back, Heidi,” Companion whispered from my heart. “Don’t stop and, for the love of Aphrodite herself, don’t look back.”
My breath caught in my throat as I watched another of the water spirits fall to something that came from yet another mirror further down our path. I felt myself beginning to panic. “There’s not enough of us for this game, Companion,” I said, pushing myself to further efforts as I felt the heat of the chasing fires begin to scorch my back. “We’re not going to make it. The urn is too distant and, if female water spirits are not burnt up in the fires of existence, we’re taken by the shadowmen. I’ve never run fast enough to escape this abysmal fate, ever.”
“Do not despair, you’ve never run this race with me by your side,” Companion said and threw himself from my heart onto the path ahead of the few remaining water spirits and myself. In my eyes, the ancient lion changed from a majestic beast into a young man of an age with the rest of us. “Come on, Heidi,” he said, taking my hand and turning his eyes towards our destination. “Use my strength and flow like the waters you emerged from. Ganymeda may run with Ganymede. We’re stronger together, come on!”
A courage and unending strength from Companion’s presence entered my body and together we began to run far faster than the maidens around us. I entered a trance-like state where there was nothing in existence except Companion’s hand in mine and my feet hitting the path over and over again. The heat from the chasing pillar of fire or the reaching tendrils of shadow from the standing mirrors ceased to concern me and I became like a woman possessed, the only goal in my mind being the urn of water at the end of the race. Neither my friend or I spoke a word as we passed through countless obstacles with as little effort as a mountain stream tumbling from the heights.
We finally reached the base of the steps leading to the great urn and Companion moved ahead of me on those as well, practically pulling me up the last obstacle with his silent yet unstoppable momentum. As we stood before the urn at last, I gazed into its still and clear water, praying that its contents would be enough to appease whatever or whoever it was who had sent my companions and I down this path in the first place.
“I hope you brought your cup with you, Heidi,” Companion said, turning to me with a smile of triumph. “I never go anywhere without mine.”
I opened my mouth to reply when two giant hands made of darkness and shadows rose from the ground and grabbed me from behind. I lost my grip on Companion’s hand as I fell through the earth and within a tunnel of shadow, down and down, into the dark. Finally, after descending for an unmarked period of time, I stood upon water in an underground cavern. I watched the water as it dripped from the ceiling to the pool and, unnaturally, from the pool back to the ceiling in an unending cycle.
As I stood, watching the dripping water and trying to make sense of what was around me after the frantic race with the water spirits, something grabbed my hand in the darkness. “Come with me,” my familiar Shadow hissed.
“Where am I…” I started to say, but she pulled me along.
“Not another word,” she said. “Something is consuming the shadow.”
A pair of giant hands slammed down from the dripping ceiling in the darkness near us, and pulled a screaming figure made of shadows up from the ground. It disappeared into the ceiling. Again, hands appeared near us, and again, it grasped a screaming giant which disappeared as it was pulled into the ceiling.
“Heidi!” Shadow said, frantic. “Come on, we have to move faster. I swear to the gods, this is all your doing and you need to stop it now.”
“You are deluded,” I said as we came to a vortex sinking down into the floor. “I am doing nothing but walking and occasionally running through this time and place. Why do you always insist that your problems in life are my fault?” Without a word, my shadow self leapt into this vortex, dragging me along with her. We went down into the darkness until there was nothing, not even light. Then, all at once, we stood within an enormous tree in front of a pool of clear sap.
Shadow paced back and forth furiously in front of the pool. “It’s seeking me in the furthest places,” she said. “There is nowhere I can rest. Nowhere I feel safe. Before this, I could always escape if I just kept going through further gates. That is no longer true.”
I knelt beside the pool and began anointing myself with the clear sap. First, I rubbed my hands, then my arms up to my elbows, next to my shoulders, and so on.
“Are you even listening to me? Do you want to end up in the belly of a nightmare?” Shadow demanded, reaching for my upper arm. I pulled myself from her grasp.
“Leave me be,” I said and ritualistically applied the sap to my eyes and cheekbones.
“No, you will listen to me for once,” she said, kneeling beside me. “Something ancient is awake and aware, and it consumes us.” Shadow slapped my face, almost gently but it stung. “Do you hear me? Wake up, Heidi!”
Coated in the sacred substance, I dipped my hands in the pool once more and reached for Shadow. “We must seek the World Tree’s knowledge,” I said. “If this is a power from a different time or place, the World Tree will know of it for they span all the worlds. They will help us if we ask.” Solemnly, I covered Shadow’s hands, arms, and face in the gold-tinted sap of the pool.
“You’re a crazy woman,” she muttered, but didn’t push me away. “And a tree hugging moron.” When we were both appropriately anointed, I raised my hands in supplication, falling to my knees before the great tree.
“Hear me, Great One,” I said, my voice ringing through the air. “World Tree, I desire and require your wisdom. Hear my plea.” Shadow grasped my hand as we began to levitate into the air side-by-side above the sacred pool. “World Tree, we desire your wisdom and your guidance. Deliver us from the one who stalks us in the night. Have mercy upon us, soul of this world and all others.”
“Young ones, we hear you and respond,” a voice whispered through the sap on our bodies. “Do you desire to see your future?”
I started to say no, when something rose from beneath us, grabbed our feet, and we were pulled down into darkness once more. When my vision cleared, I saw an enormous egg standing alone in the shadows of an ancient wood.
“An egg, naturally,” Shadow sneered. “You had me going there for a minute, Heidi. Like a tree was actually going to help us.”
“The World Tree is helping,” I said. “Though I do not yet understand what they are trying to say. It seems like I never grasp the message the first time around.” At that moment, Badger suddenly appeared in that moonlit glade. As he appeared, his dark aspect also showed up at Shadow’s hip. The two badgers, one of light and one of shadow, began to circle the egg, snarling fiercely at each other.
“Call yours off, Shadow, and I will hold mine,” I said and tried to pull my friend back from his shadow but there was no deterring him. The two circled, fought, then curled up next to each other with the egg between them. Pushing their heads onto the egg’s surface, both badgers fell deeply asleep. They glowed in the glade beneath the trees, one giving off light and the other consuming it while the egg sat serenely between the two.
“Shadow, we need to have a serious discussion,” I said. “What on earth is going on? What does this new vision mean? When we began our explorations into the inner worlds, a badger and a snake fought over an egg. Now I’m looking at dueling badgers. This makes no sense at all.”
“Beats me,” she shrugged. At that moment, an irresistible force began to come from the egg. Shadow and I were pulled to its surface like magnets to metal. “Son of Abaddon…” Shadow said and disappeared within the egg.
I yanked my head out of the egg’s pull for a moment in order to view Badger peacefully asleep in his shadow’s embrace until I too was pulled into nothingness.
When I could see again, I stood in a jungle where blood perpetually dripped from the sky like rain. Shadow was with me and we sheltered beneath an enormous leaf, gazing out over a clearing in the tangled trees and vines.
A being with hair the color of blood reclined upon a throne made of a single, enormous sea shell. To her right, the goddess Diana stood proudly with her bow in one arm and her long black hair rolling unbound down her shoulders.
“I feel like we’ve been looking for this Queen,” I said and started to walk forward, when Shadow hissed and drew me back. “Let me go,” I said and a fierce struggle began with my Shadow. “I may not know this ruling power but I’ve spoken to Diana before. Maybe she can help us understand the World Tree’s vision.”
“You need to be silent,” Shadow said. “For once, just shut up and maybe the nemesis will reveal itself. I am tired of hiding in the dark and watching my friends be taken by a power outside of their own.”
“If I were in your shoes, I’d feel the same way. I will wait with you, Shadow, but if things start to take a turn, I will be going in to help sort things out,” I said and quieted down, taking a knee beside my inner darkness. After what seemed an eternity, though was probably only a few moments, there was a disturbance in the clearing. A beautiful woman with the gray ears and tail of a mouse sauntered into view. Trailing behind her, there was a child who looked like me.
Shadow threw her hand over my mouth before I cried out. “No,” she said simply and our personal struggle began again. “Be still and allow the enemy to come to us.” As strong as I was, Shadow seemed to be incrementally stronger and we wrestled madly beneath the jungle trees.
We were fighting fiercely as the mouse-woman bowed before the Queen of Blood. “Great One,” she said. “I have brought someone who may interest you and claim the bounty you have offered for her capture.” The rain fell more quickly upon the Inner Child in front of the shell throne.
The young girl pushed the blood out of her eyes. “Who are you?” she asked innocently. “What is this place?” Then, the Child reached down and plucked a small white flower from the jungle floor. She held it out to the Queen of Blood. “Accept this offering, goddess, in tribute to your beauty and power,” the Inner Child said.
The queen reached towards the Child and her flower offering when suddenly the wolf pack arrived on the edge of the clearing. There were growls in the darkness, then pinpoints of light came from the wolves’ eyes. “Step back, madame,” a voice growled. The leader of the pack stepped into the light, morphing seamlessly from a giant gray wolf into the Horned King. “Step back,” he repeated. “The Inner Child belongs with the High Priestess and the wolf pack, who are her guardians, not you.”
The queen laughed melodically, but it grated on my ears all the same as Shadow and I wrestled in the shadows. “You and yours are not welcome here, Cernunnos,” she said softly and her voice rang effortlessly throughout the jungle. “This is the seat of my power not yours.” The Queen of Blood stood from her throne, shrugging her shoulders, releasing a cape of jungle growth covered in liquid redness from the sky.
She ran her hands along her sides and they came away coated with blood. Gently, she anointed the Inner Child’s face with the blood on her hands. As she did, the Child grew, becoming a young woman in moments.
“My daughter, once lost but now found, I rejoice in your return to me,” the Queen of Blood said. “This is your home now and when I pass from this existence I will happily give you both my throne and crown.” She pulled the former Child to her chest in a regal welcome and then pointed her towards the Horned King. “And there,” she said. “Are male invaders in our kingdom, yours and mine. What do we do with the unwelcome in the seat of our power?”
The young woman with my face considered for a moment. As she did, a multi-headed dragon made of shadows slunk into the clearing behind the wolf pack. “We drive them away,” said the newly-blooded woman. “So that they may return to the worlds where they are welcome, which are many for them but few for those such as us, the female warrior spirits of the Jungle of Blood.”
“Just so,” said the queen. “You are truly my daughter as my words come from your lips and my spirit lives in your heart. Drive the invaders away and prove, once and for all, that you are one of us, a warrior with iron in her soul, and not some meek water vessel with neither a voice to speak or a thought in her head that wasn’t put there by some greater power.”
The Queen of Blood gave the young woman an arrow tipped with pure silver and the goddess Diana handed the young woman her bow. The former Child drew the arrow with steady hands and aimed it at the Horned King’s heart.
At that moment, the multi-headed shadow of the dragon Goodness exploded beneath the feet of everyone in the clearing and released something sticky like molasses. It fell from the sky in the place of the blood, and also rose up from the ground.
The substance rising from the ground met with what fell from the sky. It gathered in pillars like the teeth of a jaw closing. Darker than shadow, faster than light, it wrapped itself around the wolf pack, Horned King, Diana, the Queen of Blood and her fearsome warriors, as well as the now-grown Child, just as she shot her silver-tipped arrow.
I screamed but everything moved in slow motion, and then the universe froze. The darker than darkness from the shadow of Goodness grabbed the arrow and guided it around the Horned King’s chest, where the Child had aimed it. It slipped easily between the pillars of living shadow and slid home within the throat of my own Shadow who was still fighting me.
Shadow coughed and tried to pull it out, but it was lodged far too deeply. Her eyes begged me for help as they began to close and I entered my waking nightmare from Hades’ coffin. I held my dying Shadow as something darker than shadow continued to rise from the ground and dripped from the sky. She faded and, within my hands in her place, an enormous egg appeared.
It cracked as the jungle faded from my awareness. Lines appeared, then a wing of what at first seemed to be black feathers but then revealed itself to be the legs of spiders popped from the egg. First one wing, then another emerged from the shell in my hands.
A beautiful youth carrying the harp of Psyche sprung from the egg. He glowed with the darkness of the substance coming from the ground and sky.
“Eros!” I cried and he paused even as he leapt away from me. “What has happened to you?”
His eyes flashed and he made no reply as he spread his arachnid leg-wings and vanished into the red-tinged skies of the Jungle of Blood, escaping the closing jaws of the Devourer without me.
I sat sadly alone and in silence while the world was consumed around me by darkness coming from the depths of the earth and the heavens. “After all this time, I have finally lost my childhood Shadow whom I loved so well,” I said at last. “Who will walk beside me now?”
In that moment as I lost all hope, Companion, shining with the power of the mystical waters of the urn of Ganymeda, stepped from my heart and sat beside me while I wept, not speaking a word but projecting strength and comfort in that dark time all the same. “I was not even given a chance to fill my cup from the urn,” I cried. “Winning the race to be a handmaiden to the gods is not enough to escape the waiting shadows. I always thought it would be.”
“By running with you, I filled my cup from the waters of Ganymeda,” Companion said. “Which has never been attempted before. If you wish it, I will be a new water source for you to slake the thirst of the ruling powers who require your presence. Is that what you desire?”
“But I did not run the race for myself, Companion,” I said, inconsolable over the loss of my Shadow. “I ran it because the gods called me out of the pool where I slept and threatened me with annihilation if I did not perform. Prior to the race, I was tired, not thirsty.”
“Then we shall find a new pool of water, a home, a companion, whatever is required, to bring you some rest,” the lion said. “Until you’re ready to continue on, I will bear witness of the loss of the Shadow of your childhood. If it is any comfort at all, this happens to all who live into adulthood. I know you’ve dreaded it coming to pass, but it’s true. Though you might not realize it now, this is a large step forward for you in your quest to banish the Devourer and a manner of victory for the water spirits.”
I had no words to respond as Companion wrapped himself around me, becoming a comforting and warm cloak of lionskin. Then, I wept in the jaws of the Devourer deep in the depths of the Jungle of Blood for an unmarked period of time over my Shadow’s disappearance from the Inner Worlds.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 